Mealey's Artificial Intelligence : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Artificial Intelligence

August 02, 2021
Employer May Examine Phones Of Former Employee Suing For Retaliation

SEATTLE — Finding that a plaintiff suing his former employer for retaliation likely acted in bad faith in not producing certain documents or disclosing the existence of a cell phone, a Washington federal judge on July 23 granted the employer’s motion to compel production of the plaintiff’s electronic devices for forensic examination.
April 15, 2021
Biometric Claim Over Facial Scans Dismissed Against Microsoft, Not Amazon

SEATTLE — In a pair of rulings issued in parallel cases April 14, a Washington federal judge dismissed claims against Microsoft Corp. under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), while declining to dismiss similar claims against Amazon.com Inc., finding that plaintiffs alleging privacy violations through the companies’ use of facial scans did not sufficiently plead that Microsoft profits from distribution of their biometric information, while holding that claims of profit by Amazon were plausibly alleged.
March 19, 2021
Privacy Suit Over Appropriated OKCupid Photos Dismissed For Lack Of Jurisdiction

CHICAGO — A woman whose dating profile pictures were used by an artificial intelligence (AI) company without her permission saw her privacy class claims against the firm dismissed March 16, with an Illinois federal judge finding insufficient evidence that the defendant purposely directed its activities at Illinois to confer specific jurisdiction in the state over it.
February 05, 2021
COMMENTARY: Pandemic Response, Elections, Virtual Classrooms, And Remote Work Drive Online Accessibility Legal Activity. A Look Back at 2020.

By Sean McElaney
January 20, 2021
7th Circuit Upholds Remand Of Facial Scan Class Complaint

CHICAGO — A class complaint accusing an artificial intelligence company of violating a single section of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by secretly creating a database of more than 3 billion facial scans on behalf of a class that includes only those who suffered no injury belongs in Illinois state court, a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled Jan. 14, affirming a trial court’s decision and finding that it “know[s] of nothing that would prevent a putative class representative from taking a conservative approach to class definition.”
December 07, 2020
COMMENTARY: Accessible Overlay Tools – Realities And Myths

By Hiram Kuykendall and Soheil Varamini
August 25, 2020
Privacy Suits Against Clearview AI Stayed Pending Consolidation Ruling

CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge on Aug. 21 granted a motion by Clearview AI Inc. to stay two consolidated Illinois suits over the company's creation of a facial recognition database pending a decision by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL) on Clearview's recently filed motion to transfer and consolidate the cases with a group of similar lawsuits in New York federal court (David Mutnick v. Clearview AI Inc., et al., No. 20-cv-512, N.D. Ill.).
August 17, 2020
Thinly Pleaded DTSA Claim Dismissed In AI Developer's Trade Secret Lawsuit

WILMINGTON, Del. — A federal judge in Delaware on Aug. 13 ruled that a developer of artificial intelligence (AI) products for the pharmaceutical industry has failed to sufficiently state its claim for trade secret misappropriation under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) with the requisite particularity against drug maker AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, stemming from the defendant's alleged misappropriation of proprietary information it obtained during discussions regarding AstraZeneca's interest in becoming a customer of the developer (Lithero LLC v. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, No. 19-2320, D. Del., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145592).
August 07, 2020
Consolidation At Issue In New York, Illinois Clearview Biometric Collection Suits

NEW YORK — Responding to a motion by Clearview AI Inc. to extend time to answer several class complaints against it, a New York federal judge on Aug. 4 issued an order clarifying that the deadlines to respond are adjourned sine die in light of an upcoming conference that will address all six biometric privacy suits against Clearview pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Mario Calderon, et al. v. Clearview AI Inc., No. 1:20-cv-01296, S.D. N.Y.).
June 26, 2020
Black YouTube Users Sue For Discrimination Over Targeting, Restricting Videos

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A group of creators of Black-themed content on YouTube LLC’s online video-sharing platform filed a punitive class complaint in California federal court on June 16, claiming that the company engages in “knowing and intentional” race discrimination by targeting and restricting videos on the basis of “race, identity or viewpoint” (Kimberly Celeste Newman, et al. v. Google LLC, No. 5:20-cv-04011, N.D. Calif.).
June 02, 2020
Illinois Man Denied Motion To Intervene In 6 New York Biometric Privacy Suits

NEW YORK — An Illinois resident who filed the first of several biometric privacy suits over Clearview AI Inc.’s creation of a facial scan database failed in his bid to intervene in six putative class actions against the tech firm in New York federal court on May 29, as a New York federal judge deemed intervention in the noncertified putative class actions “not justified on either mandatory or permissive grounds” due to the movant’s lack of cognizable interest (Mario Calderon, et al. v. Clearview AI Inc., No. 1:20-cv-01296, S.D. N.Y., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94926).
June 02, 2020
Questions Prevent Tech Company’s Bid For Injunction In Trade Secrets Dispute

BOSTON — A federal judge in Massachusetts on May 29 ruled that a technology company is not entitled to a preliminary injunction in its breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit against a former employee and his present employer, Facebook Inc., because questions exist as to whether the source code and algorithms the defendants are alleged to have misappropriated are truly trade secrets and whether the alleged trade secrets were obtained by the defendants by improper means (Neural Magic Inc. v. Facebook Inc., et al., No. 20-10444, D. Mass.).
May 27, 2020
Intervention, Dismissal, Injunction Debated In Facial Data Collection Lawsuits

CHICAGO — An Illinois man who filed the first of several privacy lawsuits over the online facial data collection practices conducted by Clearview AI Inc. filed a supplemental brief in New York federal court on May 20, supporting his motion to intervene in five lawsuits in that venue, arguing that a recent development in his suit in Illinois federal court weights in favor of litigating claims against the tech firm in the Illinois court (David Mutnick v. Clearview AI Inc., et al., No. 1:20-cv-00512, N.D. Ill.).
April 09, 2020
Illinois Man Seeks To Enjoin Clearview’s Collection, Sale Of Biometric Identifiers

CHICAGO — The lead plaintiff in the first of six federal complaints filed against Clearview AI Inc. for its collection and sale of the biometric identifiers of millions of people filed a motion in Illinois federal court on April 8, seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent any further use of the identifiers pending the resolution of his claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) (David Mutnick v. Clearview AI Inc., et al., No. 1:20-cv-00512, N.D. Ill.).
March 18, 2020
Facebook, Former Employee Misappropriated AI Trade Secrets, Tech Start-Up Says

BOSTON — A technology company’s former employee breached the terms of his employment agreements by providing the company’s proprietary set of algorithms used in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to Facebook Inc. in violation of state and federal trade secret laws, the company alleges in a March 4 complaint filed in Massachusetts federal court (Neural Magic Inc. v. Facebook Inc., et al., No. 20-10444, D. Mass.).
January 27, 2020
Tech Firm Hit With Class Complaint For Creating ‘Massive’ Facial Scan Database

CHICAGO — Clearview AI Inc. created and furnished to law enforcement a database of the facial scans of “millions of unsuspecting individuals,” contributing to the creation of a “massive surveillance state” a plaintiff claims in a putative class complaint filed Jan. 22 in Illinois federal court, alleging violations of the First, Fourth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) (David Mutnick v. Clearview AI Inc., et al., No. 1:20-cv-00512, N.D. Ill.).
January 09, 2020
COMMENTARY: Top Ten Digital Accessibility Legal Stories Of 2019

By Sean McElaney
May 21, 2019
COMMENTARY: LCIA Perspectives, Parts 10 - 12

LCIA Perspectives, Parts 10 - 12
April 01, 2019
COMMENTARY: LCIA Perspectives, Parts 7 - 9

To help mark the 125th anniversary of the formal inauguration in 1892 of “The City of London Chamber of Arbitration”, which evolved into The London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), the institution published a series of “perspectives” over the course of 2018, from a range of commentators from the diverse LCIA community.
March 12, 2019
COMMENTARY: LCIA Perspectives, Parts 4 - 6

To help mark the 125th anniversary of the formal inauguration in 1892 of “The City of London Chamber of Arbitration”, which evolved into The London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), the institution published a series of “perspectives” over the course of 2018, from a range of commentators from the diverse LCIA community.
March 20, 2019
Microsoft Petitions Board For Review Of Software Task Completion Patent

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A claimed method of collective task completion among distributed software agents using an inter-agent communication language (ICL) to provide a common communication protocol would have been obvious to a person of skill in the art (POSITA), Microsoft Corp. asserts in a March 19 petition for inter partes review by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Microsoft Corp. v. IPA Technologies Inc., No. IPR2019-00837, PTAB).
February 12, 2019
COMMENTARY: LCIA Perspectives, Parts 1 - 3

To help mark the 125th anniversary of the formal inauguration in 1892 of “The City of London Chamber of Arbitration”, which evolved into The London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), the institution published a series of “perspectives” over the course of 2018, from a range of commentators from the diverse LCIA community.
February 23, 2018
Defendant Says Electric Car Company’s DTSA Claim Is Subject To Arbitration

LOS ANGELES — A stay of proceedings in a Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) suit filed by an electric car company against a competitor is necessary because employment agreements for the car company’s former employees that now work for the competitor state that all disputes are required to be arbitrated, the competitor argues in a brief filed Feb. 20 in California federal court (Faraday & Future Inc. v. EVelocity Inc., No. 18-0737, C.D. Calif.).
July 18, 2017
COMMENTARY: Insuring The Sharing Economy and FINTECH: The Exposures And Related Coverage Issues, Where Things Now Stand And Where They May Be Heading

By Todd D. Kremin and Peter J. Biging
May 03, 2016
Judge In Ashley Madison MDL Bars Plaintiffs From Using Stolen Documents

ST. LOUIS — The plaintiffs in a multidistrict litigation against the operator of AshleyMadison.com related to a July 2015 breach of the adult dating website’s network may not use or refer to documents stolen from Avid Dating Life Inc. in the computer hack of its database when filing the plaintiffs’ consolidated complaint, a Missouri federal judge ruled April 29 (In re Ashley Madison Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, No. 15-2669, E.D. Mo.; 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57619).